Chuck Grant Quotations

Give Orion the credit. Their kids played really hard. I like their team. They do a lot of things well. Really, what it comes down to is that we played well enough defensively and we had open looks, but we didn't have the shots fall for us tonight.

Jon pitched a very good game, but there were two innings when we gave them five outs. We're a pretty young team, and we were missing a couple of players today, but that's no excuse for mental errors. We have to improve in that area, and it's my job to see that we do.

I think things will come around the way we expect very soon. We should be good defensively because we've got kids with good hands and quick feet. The infield is looking pretty good right now and the outfield is starting to solidify.

Jared is the guy we'll look to for leadership because of his experience. He's a very hard-nosed competitor, and I expect him to help make the younger players better.

Our success this year will depend on how well our pitching comes around. Brian had good success as a freshman, so we expect that to continue and improve. I've seen some real good things from Ryan and Rhett as well.

That was a well-executed defensive play. That kind of set the tone as this was probably the best defensive game we've played all year. We only committed one error, and if we can play defense like that, then we'll win games.

We play up tempo. The only drawback to it was that we didn't do a very good job of looking into the post. We settled too much off the dribble tonight.

We still had a few mental errors out there, a couple of throws that missed a cutoff man, and a couple of missed signs, but it was a lot better than it has been.

Those were two outstanding plays Josh made out there. It's not out of line to say that those plays won the game for us.

We've been committing mental errors early in the games, and it's put us in a hole every time. I like the way we keep battling back - these kids don't believe they're ever out of the game - but we've just not executed well in the early parts of the games.

We want to play Orion again. But we can't look past that first game. You have to respect that first opponent, no matter who they are.

Brian (Thompson) was a little uncomfortable out there throwing off the flat ground, and that helped account for all the walks we gave up. It's also the first game of the season, and we'll get better out on the mound. I saw some good things today from our pitchers and we'll improve on that.

Ben had some real good at-bats today. He used the whole field, going opposite field for a couple of his hits.

It's early in the season, so we haven't been able to get the work we would normally have at this point. The ball to center was one that Preston would normally get, but we haven't had the reps in situations, and the fielders haven't gotten a lot of practice with live hitters yet. That will change as we get more practices and games under our belts.

In the first half and early in the third quarter, our defensive rotation was a little slow. Aledo has one of the most potent offenses in the Olympic Conference, but if your rotation is good, then they can be stopped. If your rotation is not good, then they will cause you a lot of problems, and that's what happened to us.

The guys hit the ball really well today, that part of our game seems to be coming around. Our pitching was also pretty strong, even though Brian struggled a little with his control. We made a couple of silly errors, so that's the area we're really trying to address as we head into our last few games.

All three of them have positives, so we'll be using whichever one the situation calls for at the time.